broken dreams
by nesshaw
Summary: Cassiopeia watched as the Black Family crumbled before her. She lived to see almost quite the end of it.


**_competition: _**_The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, round eight. _

**_words count:_ 951-i**'m really strugging with words count nowdays.

_**prompts: **destruction**,** rare, tap on the window._

**_disclaimer_**_: disclaimed_

* * *

She watches as her kingdom falls before her.

**i.**

She knew something was strange when there was no Hogwarts enrollment letter for Marius when she came back home on summer after her second year. Marius had been eleven for five months and he was a _Black, _so why hadn't he received his letter yet?

She approached him only to see that his room was almost empty. He was standing by the tall window, his back facing her.

"I couldn't do magic," Marius confessed with a defeated tone without turning to look at her.

"_What do you mean you couldn't do magic_?" she asked incredulously. The revelation baffled her that she almost couldn't accept it. Magic belonged to a pureblood, to her, to him, their family and it was the universal truth.

"I'm a squib, have little to no ability to perform magic," He elaborated, turning to her.

"Then you're not a Black. You're _nothing,__" she said, surprised by a hint of disgust in her tone. After all, she had known the boy standing before her for years, but suddenly he became a stranger, the unwanted one even. It was terrifying. _

_He looked at her, sadness gleaming in his eyes. "I'm under impression that I'm your brother, have been for eleven years. Does this newfound fact disgust you so much, dear sister?"_

_"No," she said softly before she cleared her throat. "Not anymore. And yes, people with no magical ability do have little to no place in this world."_

**ii.**

Cassiopeia is a beauty in destruction, a queen in the midnight sky.

She dons the family motto 'Toujours Purs' in her skin and sits on the top of the hierarchy. There's something beautifully addicting about power; the sense of being in control and able to make change as she pleases. Her words and belief are absolute. If someone was to contradict her, they could die trying and their effort would still be fruitless. She is the truth and the truth is absolute. It's this or that, nothing in between.

**iii.**

Dorea was next to go.

It was almost ironic that she was swayed by some Potter.

Cassiopeia acknowledged that the Potter family were pure, including the fact that they were the descendant of one of the Peverell brothes, but since they were not listed on the sacred twenty eight said something else. Something that made Cassiopeia disapprove of their relationship. Since Dorea's name wasn't blasted off from the family tapestry, their parents must have a different opinion.

The Potter family might not be openly blood traitors like the Weasleys, but the thought was there. They looked down on the Dark Arts as if by doing so placing themselves as a saint. If they were the angels, did that make the Blacks the devils? Cue the irony.

With the third and fourth sibling gone, she's forced to look up to the first brother, Pollux, who's a bastard on a good day. She doesn't interact with him too much, nothing they are too alike.

**iv.**

She lives long enough to witness a lot of things; the war, the struggling for change, the dying family. They are taken one by one until she's left to ponder the end of the world that she knows and loves.

When the news about the fallen Dark Lord reaches her, she's sixty six of solitude and struggling to cling on her throne. Some Black names appear on the newspaper, notifying their life sentence in Azkaban.

The fact that Sirius Black is among them piques her interest. Sirius, after all, the first and last person who ever disgraced the Black family to such an extent that it's a wonder how he's the way he's in the first place. Walburga is a pretty good Black if not a little bit too nasty. Never in her lifetime has she said half the curse words her niece did in one sentence.

It seems that Sirius betrayed the Potters to the Dark Lord. She doesn't believe it, of course, but she's still happy and satisfied nonetheless. _Serves him right, blood traitors. _

**v.**

Cassiopeia and Andromeda are intertwined with each other, at least in the terms of Greeks mythology—not that they are aware of it.

In reality, the latter is her grand nephew and married a Mudblood and somehow produced a Metamorphmagus; a rare ability that one could only hope to have.

She hates the uncertainty that seems to try to break their way through the core of her belief. They turn it upside down, from a basic falsehood into a complicated truth, like the autumn wind that taps on your window, telling you the weather could be bad, but it could also turn good.

**vi.**

She dies of old age, leaving no heir. She doesn't have a definite reason why she has never married, would say that she's content being alone, but really, reality doesn't work like that. She would, perhaps, give a good argument about the almost extinct pureblood families that leave her no choice. She could get away with that before she has to make up another excuse until she forgets the root question.

When she closes her eyes, she sees her parents and all of her siblings together. The sight is quite odd since she has never seen anything like this for sixty five years. What surprises her more is the feeling that grows rapidly inside her chest as she approaches them. It's an indescribable happiness that she doesn't think she has ever experienced before.

She's been running all her life to avoid the thought that she misses and wants a complete family. Now when she's about to rejoin them, she hopes this is some kind of second chance in the afterlife.

She's reaching towards them and they are all gone.


End file.
